Will locals love or loathe the van life comedians?

MICK Neven and Nicky Wilkinson have spent the past year crisscrossing Australia in their VW Crafter with their dog Larry, bringing their comedy show to towns along the way.

But the stand-up duo admit they are feeling a little nervous about their upcoming visit to the Northern Rivers, where van life has been known to spark strong opinions.

“The Brunswick Heads community page popped up in my Facebook feed the other day and half the community’s like, ‘We want the vans out’ and the other half are like, ‘Why are you being so mean?’,” Neven said. “We might get a protest audience, with people saying, ‘We don’t want these van life comedians in our town.’

“But we have a fully self-contained van and leave nothing behind, just memories of a fun night out.”

The couple have performed stand-up individually all over the world, from the Melbourne International Comedy Festival to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Neven has also entertained Australian troops in Iraq on Christmas Eve.

The pair met backstage at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, with Wilkinson moving to Australia in 2019.

“Nicky is English so she gets very excited by blue skies and big horizons,” Neven said.

“A lot of our show is regular stand-up, but we’re working on van life material and being on the road.

“It’s a bit of classic Australian stand-up comedy and classic English stand-up comedy. We’re pretty similar in our sense of humour.

“A lot of Nicky’s stuff is what it’s like to be an English person in Australia talking about magpies, snakes, classic Australian sayings and the people you meet in the Outback.

“Mine is observational storytelling from life on the road and growing up as a young Australian bogan learning to do burnouts when I was 12 years old.”

Vanlife Comedians will be at M Arts Precinct Murwillumbah on January 7, Blah Bar Lismore on January 8 and The Drill Hall Theatre in Mullumbimby on January 9.

For tickets, visit linktr.ee/vanlifecomedians.